MOSCOW, November 11 (RIA Novosti, Olga Lipich) - The Russian Jewish Congress (RJC), the largest secular Jewish organization in the country, has changed its leadership, an RJC official said Friday.
Natalia Rykova, the RJC public relations director, said the president of the Russian Jewish Congress Vladimir Slutsker, 49, had announced his resignation after just under a year in the post at a meeting of the RJC Presidium "due to opposing views he and other presidium members have on further development of the organization." Some members had already tried to secure his removal on October 6.
"Vladimir Slutsker considers his resignation final and does not want to take the post of chairman of the RJC director's board offered to him by the presidium," Rykova said.
Vyacheslav Kantor, chairman of the Board of Governors of the European Jewish
Congress and founding president of the World Holocaust Forum Foundation, has been elected as acting head of the Russian congress, which was founded by a group of tycoons in 1996 to promote a Jewish revival in the country.
